So I haven’t been watching TV much lately, but from what I hear there is some clamoring going on about a recession, or a stock market crash, something fishy gong down on wall street and some black guy running for president… I think. Its like Gizmo said, every time they have a black man or a woman president in a movie it’s always the end of the world… maybe. I sleep most of my mornings away and work late into the nights, so sometimes I’m too self absorbed to be socially aware, but its like I woke up one day and everybody was running to take their money out of the banks, and my grandfather was talking something about nobody is going to have a job anymore, blah blah.. something about pensions, ramble ramble… were moving to London. Now I’m still confuse as to what exactly all the panic is about and I don’t know exactly what kind of ganking this government is planning on, but one thing I do know is that there is always one group of people whose economic value could never decrease no matter how much the dollar plummets, and the threat of a job loss never applied to them…. or us… artist.
We, as artist are sometimes the most self absorbed and socially unaware american citizens, but at the same time have the power to shape public opinion in a way CNN and ABC could only dream about… and sometimes it’s by accident. Homes are getting foreclosed, student loans are getting discontinued, gas prices are rising, people are getting laid off, but the one thing that will never depreciate is the value of art. We may be cutting back on bankers and stock brokers, but artist are always in high demand. If another great depression were to hit this economy the “starving artist” will be the last survivor as we take your last few government issued pennies in exchange for our social commentary. Comedians, graffiti artist, filmmakers, painters, poets, sculptors, and photographers become full-time employees of this social deterioration as we crawl out of bed at the crack of noon and draw, paint, write, film, our way through this economic decline, unaware and unconcerned at how this will ever affect us, and instead make our money off of the worlds misery by accidently creating a piece of self expression that makes everybody stop and stare, watch, laugh, read. Nobody believes politicians anymore, or news anchors, or journalist,… but everybody want to know what NaS has to say, or what Chris Rock thinks is so funny, or what new painting Bansky has thrown up… and when everybody is jobless, homeless, gas-less, and bank-less, they will be looking to spend their last nickel on a piece of art we let go for pennies… just to get it out there. At times like this what else is worth buying? …not like artist ever do it for the money tho…
Nik Richard
“The Voice of Reason”
This entry was posted on Thursday, January 8th, 2009 at 4:35 am and is filed under Recession. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
January 19th, 2009 at 12:14 am
Very insightful.
July 26th, 2009 at 11:05 am
This is absolutely perfect. Thanks a lot, I’ve been looking for something like this for a long time.